It Does Not Require Much From Us - A conversation with Bachan Gyawali of Jun Chiyabari, Nepal
I have been buying tea from Jun Chiyabari (Moonlit Tea Garden) for years, and for years I have struggled to explain to customers what makes it different. The usual vocabulary doesn't quite reach it. So earlier this summer I wrote to Bachan Gyawali, one of the owners, and asked.
He replied at length, and more candidly than I expected — including, at one point, to tell me that one of my questions was built on a wrong assumption. I've left that in.
Jun Chiyabari sits in the Dhankuta district of eastern Nepal, in the mid-Himalayan hills. It was founded twenty-five years ago. In that time the garden has become one of the most respected in the country, and has quietly stopped resembling the Darjeeling estates it once looked to. What follows is that conversation, lightly edited.
On how they farm
You once mentioned that Jun Chiyabari has moved beyond standard organic practices toward a more minimal-intervention approach. Is this still the case? What inspired the evolution?
Yes, we do believe in a minimal-intervention approach to our farming, which stems (hope you like the pun) from an underlying philosophy of ours — to respect and act as guardians to the land. For our own and future generations' sake.
"To respect the land" means learning from and allowing nature to dictate how we manage our farming practices rather than intervening constantly. This does not mean we put our hands up and don't do anything.
Guardianship means not only safeguarding the land and its environment in its current avatar but enhancing it further, as nature would have done so over time.
Adding trees, grass and plant covers that were removed and left denuded by previous generations decades ago. Leaving intact the topsoil as much as possible. Creating ponds for water storage. Small, small things that all add up.
The inspiration for the evolution towards minimal intervention was a natural process brought about by constant observation in the gardens. It does not require much from us, to see what is right and what is wrong.
On the farmers, and the land
Years ago, Jun Chiyabari bought green leaf from independent smallholders in the surrounding hills. When the garden applied for organic certification, that arrangement ended. I asked what that was like, and how much land they farm now — and got a correction along with the answer.
What was it like pivoting away from small tea growers, and now that you no longer depend on them, roughly how much acreage is Jun spread over?
It was such a long time ago. An event that we never really dwelt on. We just moved on, never looking back. I don't even remember if we were disappointed or relieved. We had invested material and knowledge with the farmers but didn't really expect anything like loyalty in return. It was, after all, a symbiotic relationship.
We never "depended on them" either, so your framing of the question is inaccurate.
We had (have) enough planted area to take care of our own manufacturing need.
Currently we have 120 hectares, or 300 acres, of land under our guardianship, of which, approximately 58 hectares or 145 acres are under tea plantation. Rest are jungle, forests, grasslands, streams, gullies and bluffs, as well as roads, buildings and other built up areas.
On the weather
How are you currently experiencing and responding to the effects of climate change in your region?
Climate change is real and happening, just how much, we are not quite sure. For now though, we are dealing with the immediate effects of global warming on the one hand and the (changing) greening of our local Nepal mid-Himalayan hills on the other.
In the last 25 years — since the inception of Jun Chiyabari, that is — forest cover in Nepal has increased from 25% to 47%. This staggering growth is bound to have effects on so many levels, one of which being our local weather and microclimate.
Both, global warming and forest cover, undoubtedly affect us, singularly and inter-actively, in ways that we might not quite understand, yet. What we can report conclusively is that, for the last few years: springs have arrived earlier, winters come later while rains remain unpredictable.
Our limited understanding of climate change is that it is to be studied in scores of multiple decades, centuries, to truly know that there are major shifts and changes, and that this isn't just a blip because of some solar anomaly or other planetary causes.
On the people who work there
It is difficult to quantify the impact Jun Chiyabari has on the local community in general and our workers in particular. On workers' level, our adhering to Nepal's labor laws is the starting point. Nepali labor laws are and have always been very pro workers' rights.
Over the years, amendments have been introduced to reform labor laws so that they meet current challenges and remain relevant. At Jun Chiyabari, as with almost all hill tea gardens and factories in Nepal, workers have homes and land of their own. Many of them farm, keep livestock and have a life outside of tea. Coming to work at the garden and factory is just another facet of their lives. There is less dependency on the tea company.
This does not mean we take our eyes off the ball.
Bachan also told me about the garden's community work in the district — a clean drinking water project at local schools, scholarships for local children — and then asked that I mention it only in passing. So I will mention it only in passing, and let his reason stand as the whole of it: We do not like to talk about it and never use it as a promotional or "feel good" tool. You will not see us posting about it. We do it because our heart tells us to. Because we want to.
On how they run it
Most tea gardens are run by a single manager with near-total authority — an inheritance from the colonial estates. Jun Chiyabari tried that, and stopped. Part of the reason was practical. For decades, Nepali gardens recruited experienced managers from Darjeeling, a day's drive away across the border. That stopped working.
As Bachan put it, Jun Chiyabari and Darjeeling had grown apart in the twenty-five years since their inception — the gardens were no longer doing the same thing, so the expertise no longer transferred.
What they built instead: We picked people to specialize in specific roles. There were some moves and adjustments made. A team of 5 seniors and 2 upcoming juniors was constituted. That is how we currently operate. Seven people, sharing what one person used to hold. In an industry this traditional, that is a genuinely unusual structure, and it is of a piece with everything else — less command, more observation.
On becoming themselves
Jun Chiyabari is one of very few gardens anywhere to have planted tea cultivars brought from other parts of Asia. Our Himalayan Shiiba comes from one of those experiments — a Japanese cultivar, grown in Nepal, made by hand. I wanted to know why they bothered.
You are among the few, if not the only garden, that has experimented with tea cultivars transplanted from other parts of Asia. What prompted you to do this, and what have you learned so far?
We needed an identity of our own. Towards that, we needed differentials to separate us from the rest. Unique tea cultivars and varietals are part of that equation. But that alone doesn't create an identity. Farming philosophies and practices, crafting tools and methods and a company's business ethos, they all need to come together.
So far, we have learnt that we must keep an open mind; keep learning from doing the same thing and try doing new things. Be better today than yesterday. Then, as you lay in bed at night, remember, tomorrow is a brand new day.
I asked that question expecting to hear about terroir and cup character. What I got was an answer about identity — and a reminder that a cultivar on its own is just a plant. It becomes a tea because of the philosophy that decides when to pick it, the hands that shape it, and the person who decides what the company is for.
Twenty-five years ago this was a remote hillside in Dhankuta almost half a day's drive from Darjeeling where all the expertise lived. Now it is one of the most interesting gardens in Asia, on land that is more than half jungle, run by a small group of people who share the job, growing cultivars nobody else in Nepal has tried, and their sublime teas celebrated by tea lovers around the world.
Four teas from this year's harvests are on our shelves now — Himalayan Spring, Himalayan Supreme, Himalayan Shiiba, and the Himalayan White.